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Engineering the Future

The largest capital construction project in UW history would reaffirm commitment to engineering excellence

Volume 14 | Number 2 | January 2013

By Steve Kiggins

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Jerad Stack wraps both of his hands
around a Bauer hockey stick, his knuckles
whitening as he squeezes the composite
shaft, and prepares to mimic the hardest
shot in the game of ice hockey.

“The last thing you want is for your
stick to break,” Stack says as he cautiously
guides the preferred weapon of professional
superstars Steven Stamkos, Evgeni
Malkin and Jonathan Toews through
Wyoming’s thin air, being careful that
his simulated slapshot doesn’t damage
anything inside his office.

A well-struck slapshot, though, can
reach speeds of nearly 110 mph. It’s the
single most feared shot in the game,
what often differentiates a good scorer
from a great one. It’s the primary reason
why goaltenders wear a helmet with a
mask and all that padding.

His demonstration complete, Stack sets
the blade of the stick on the carpeted
floor and rests his body against the shaft.
“If you’re working for Bauer hockey,
you can determine, before you go build
one, how stiff the stick is going to be,
how strong of a slapshot it’s going to
take before it breaks, all of that,” he says.
“That’s what our software does. You can
do that virtually, with our technology.
The materials are expensive. To build
them and break them and build them
and test them again, that takes a long
time. And it’s expensive.”

A better hockey stick is just the tip
of the iceberg at Firehole, a worldwide
supplier of computer-aided engineering
software whose clients include Boeing,
NASA and Red Bull Racing. The
Laramie-based company—Stack, just 36
years old, is the chief executive officer—
also has worked with three branches of
the United States military.

The cutting-edge technology
patented and sold by Firehole helps
create a better tomorrow for people
around the world. But none of it—
not the company, not the software—
would exist without the College of
Engineering and Applied Science
(CEAS) at the University of Wyoming.

“We have a history of developing
entrepreneurs out of the College of
Engineering: Jerad Stack, Mike Kmetz,
Mona Gamboa, Randal Six. All of
them are graduates and successful entrepreneurs,”
says Laramie engineer and
surveyor Dave Coffey, whose grandfather,
Donald R. Lamb, is a member of the
CEAS Hall of Fame at Wyoming’s university.
“We’re graduating industry leaders
here. And those industry leaders land in
jobs and start careers and start companies
in Wyoming that can provide huge
economic development opportunities for
the state.”

"I got a wonderful education here,” says
Stack, a native of Casper who graduated
from UW, just as generations before
him in his family, including his parents.
“Every time I hear someone talking
about coming here, I give them a sincere,
emphatic pitch. I’ve worked with people
who went to MIT and some of the other
big schools. But the education I got here,
I’d put it up against anybody.”

But UW’s legacy of engineering excellence
faces a threat. While enrollment
continues to rise, up 22 percent over the past six years, the university has run
out of space in antiquated facilities that
fail to rival regional peer institutions,
including Colorado State University,
Montana State University and the
University of Utah.

UW’s newest engineering space, a
major 1980 addition to a building that
opened nearly 90 years ago, is the same
age as most schools’ oldest engineering
facilities, and many CEAS teaching laboratories
are just 25 percent of needed
space and lacking the newest technology.

That’s why university and state officials
are exploring a massive capital
construction project that would likely
be the largest in UW’s 126-year
history. A year ago, the Wyoming State
Legislature appropriated $1.15 million
to plan for the renovation and expansion
of CEAS facilities. Lawmakers also
set aside $30 million in state funding,
to be matched by $30 million in private
donations, as the first step toward rejuvenating
UW’s facilities.

“UW’s College of Engineering and
Applied Science has been a wonderful
place for students to get an education for
decades, and our graduates’ successful
careers are truly remarkable and span an
impressive array of industries,” says Andy
Hansen, UW’s associate provost. “While
the college has a rich tradition of excellence,
the growth of the college in terms
of students and faculty is constrained
by an acute lack of laboratory space.
Moreover, intellectual advancement in an
exploding era of technological innovation
requires a modernization of a great many
teaching and research labs.

“The college is poised to take a significant
step toward national prominence
with the proposed facility upgrades, providing
tangible outcomes that will surely
benefit Wyoming in a substantial way.”

'This Guy is a Hero'

Mike Kmetz doesn’t remember the engineer’s
name. But he has never forgotten
his words.

“He had a part that went in a printer, a
plastic part, and he held it up and said,
‘You know what, it takes us like six or
eight weeks to go from concept to where
we get a prototype. We’ve got to cut the
time on that,’” Kmetz says. “All that
we wanted to do at that time was to get
more involved in developing some engineering
software. We weren’t thinking so
much about the marketing side. We just
thought it would be cool to help him
solve his problem.”

He stops, as if he’s remembering the
1986 encounter all over again, and then
finds his words. “But, now, in hindsight,”
Kmetz says, “that was a real
pivotal meeting.”

With IBM’s problem as the catalyst—
the American technology and consulting
giant had come to the University
of Wyoming seeking help in its quest
for a more efficient method to reference
technical information for the plastics
it was using to develop its computer
products—Kmetz, who was pursuing
his master’s degree in mechanical engineering
at the time, began building what
has since become the largest plastics-only database in the world.

From some 9,000 materials in its
infant stages, the IDES Prospector
Plastic Materials Database has grown to
include more than 85,000 materials and
875 global manufacturers. The database
of the first spin-off business to emerge
from UW research is available in seven
languages and accessed annually by
more than 319,000 industry users.

“Mike Kmetz is a hero for technology
businesses in Laramie,” says Bill Gern,
UW’s vice president for research and
economic development. “He really,
really worked hard. He put every nickel
he could get his hands on, and raised
a family at the same time, into that
company. He took a Ph.D. dissertation
and made a business out of it.”

In July 2012, Kmetz sold IDES to UL,
an Illinois-based safety consulting and
certification company that will enable
Kmetz to globally grow his company,
primarily into Asia, where IDES’
database is particularly lacking.

But Kmetz had one stipulation to the
sale: IDES would remain in Laramie,
inside the brick building on Grand
Avenue, a stone’s throw from The
Library Sports Grille and Brewery.

Like Firehole Composites, whose
Laramie offices are located next to Alexander’s Fine Jewelry on
Second Street, though most folks
walk right on past the glass front
door without giving it a second
look, UL/IDES is hidden in plain
sight on the high plains.

“We’re beginning to see some
diversification in our economy
in Laramie and southeast
Wyoming, and that’s because
we’re beginning to see technology
companies spring up. That’s
largely due to the College of
Engineering,” says Coffey, CEO
of Coffey Engineering and Surveying,
a third-generation consulting firm
that was founded by UW professors in
1951. “I can’t help but believe that if we
improve the College of Engineering,
we’ll continue to see further growth in
the technology sector and that’s huge for
this part of Wyoming that doesn’t have
any mineral resources.

'We Made It Now'

When Jerad Stack answered his phone
on an April day in 2007, he didn’t know
his life would change. On the other end
was Emmett Nelson, the chief technology
officer and principal engineer at
Firehole Composites.

“He said, ‘You wanna come home?’”
Stack recalls with a smile.

Firehole was at a crossroads. Two of
the company’s co-founders, Six and
Chris Key, also UW graduates, had
decided to move onto other ventures,
and Nelson didn’t want to see
Firehole’s fledgling potential fall into
oblivion. But he needed help.

It was an easy decision, Stack says, to
return to Wyoming after launching his
career in Texas and Colorado. Months
later, Firehole advocates at the U.S. Air
Force provided the words of encouragement
that spurred Stack and Nelson to
grow the company, setting into motion a
series of events that culminated in 2009 with the first sale of a piece of software.

“It was actually the day of our
Christmas party in 2009,” says Stack,
whose company has now grown to 16
employees, including 14 UW graduates.
“The guy called and said, ‘We’re sending
you a check!’”

A year later, Firehole struck its partnership
with Boeing, the marquee client that
Stack and Nelson knew they needed to
establish themselves in the marketplace.
“Emmett and I looked at each other and
said, ‘We made it now,’” Stack says. “They
drive us to make our products better, and
we feel like we’re helping them to make
their products better.”

Today, Firehole also has offices in
Seattle, to strengthen its relations with
Boeing and other Northwest clients,
and Casper.

“And it all harks back to the 1980s,
when the Department of Mechanical
Engineering at the university made a
pretty heavy investment in composites,”
says Stack, referring to the Composite
Materials Research Group, which was
founded in 1972 by Donald F. Adams,
a now-retired professor who, to this day,
is affectionately referred to as UW's "Godfather of Composites."

Stack is certain UW can be the breeding
grounds for future companies like his
own. With one caveat: The state and the
university must continue the work that
began during the 2012 legislative budget
session to upgrade engineering facilities
on the Laramie campus.

Whatever the cost, Kmetz says the
project will pay dividends—for students,
the university and the state. “I’m certainly
on the side of the fence that
believes we need a world-class facility to
churn out world-class engineers and to
attract research dollars,” he says.

Coffey’s grandfather is another strong
proponent. As a UW faculty member
from 1951 to 1981, Donald R. Lamb
conducted much of his research in
the “Sawtooth,” the nickname for the
original 1925 Engineering Building.
“And he told me that, even back in those
days, the ‘Sawtooth’ was an outdated
and poorly designed space,” Coffey says.

When he passed along the news that
UW and state officials were collaborating
on a plan to upgrade the engineering
facilities, Coffey says his grandfather
had a universal reaction.